


The Requisite Teamup Between Two Plucky Teenaged Superheroes by Stephanie Brown (age 19)

by NightsMistress



Category: Batgirl (Comic), Blue Beetle (Comic), DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephanie Brown celebrates finishing her exams in style: teaming up with the newest Blue Beetle, punching labyrinths and capping it off with delicious waffles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Requisite Teamup Between Two Plucky Teenaged Superheroes by Stephanie Brown (age 19)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perpetfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/gifts).



> The usual thanks to my betas, who were very patient with me as I gnashed my teeth over how this story would never, ever end, and to my giftee whose requests inspired something not quite what she was asking for but was immense fun anyway to write.

_Now_

“Oh my God,” Batgirl moaned, squirming away from the magical electric eel snaking around her feet.  She wasn’t even sure that it was an electric eel; it just felt like something snaking around her ankles, shocking her every time she tried to move.  To make matters worse, it was backlit with some kind of creepy blue light that made everything look much worse than it could possibly be.The light from whatever was on her ankles and the lights from Blue Beetle’s eyes were the only things she could see in the darkness, and she closed her eyes to focus her hearing.  Beside her she could hear Blue Beetle muttering under his breath, and she shuffled the two feet towards him on her butt, her hands pinned behind her by the magically reinforced rope tying her wrists together.  The ground was damp and slippery, which did nothing to help her progress.

“No, we can’t do that - no, that’s not an option either … _why would you even suggest that?!_ ” It sounded like Blue Beetle and his weird AI friendwere getting along swimmingly.  She wondered what sort of ideas it was suggesting, and whether any of them involved explosions.  She was pretty sure that explosives would be a bad idea, what with them being tied up, but a small part of her was adamant that a good explosion would just fix _everything_.  Or at least the one where she was in a bad mood because she was tied up and wasn’t quite sure how it happened.  She turned her head and squinted at Blue Beetle.

“Hey.”  He started, looking up at her.  His eyes, lit up as they were, cast eerie shadows around them, which did nothing to help Batgirl’s eyes adjust to the dark.  

“So, how _did_  we end up in a situation like this?”

 _Three hours earlier - aka “How They Ended Up In A Situation Like This”_

Stephanie stood triumphant over the latest symbol of Gotham University’s latest attempt to crush her spirit, pressing her foot into it and feeling it give under her low (and therefore extremely practical, if not flattering) heel. Unfortunately,being a first year psychology textbook, it didn’t squirm or make any satisfactory noises, but she would take what victories she could get.

“Take that, Skinner!  I bet your kids hated you,” she gloated, drawing sidelong looks from the few people around who weren’t dwelling on their impending academic doom.  Most students, however, were in the strange hyperfocused  state that comes with study week and the horrible dawning realization that all those nights spent ignoring the assigned reading were about to bite you with a vengeance. Stephanie, having been blessed by the college gods by having most of her exams the week before finals, had just finished her only exam. Now she was free from the shackles of college life for a whole month.  Suck it, everyone!

Judging by the disapproving looks from the people without earphones, Stephanie had said all of that aloud. She picked up her textbook sheepishly, shoving it into her messenger bag and pretending that it was some other stranger with a startling resemblance to her who was abusing overpriced academic texts on subjects she didn’t care that much about.  She observed with a wry smirk that, after she stopped acting like a crazy person, people just went back to their own personal universes of cramming for exams and wondering whether having those six cups of coffee and No-Doze was such a good idea.

“Face it, Steph,” she muttered, heading out of the university and towards the nearest bus stop.  “You’re just not as interesting as multivariable calculus or whatever they call it.” Carrying on her run of good fortune, she arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was turning up.  She showed her ticket to the bus driver, flashing him a cheerful grin at his sour disinterest, and took a seat midway down the bus.  There was something naggingly familiar about the teenaged Hispanic boy sitting across from her, his hand pressed against his temple as he muttered to himself.  

“Yeah, I _know_. This way was better.”  His accent was definitely from the south - somewhere down near the Texas-Mexico border if Steph picked her regions right.  He was kind of cute, in a frazzled way, though Steph promptly squashed those feelings down flat. She’d had enough with dating cute nerd boys, especially after how badly her relationship with Tim had gone. From now, Stephanie Brown was a free agent, free like a bird … and just as prone to making comments at unfortunate moments as the parrot her uncle Sam had owned before it “flew away” when Steph was six. Yep, today sure was Stephanie Brown Can’t Keep Her Internal Narration To Herself Day.

She waved sardonically at the boy, who was giving her a weird look. As if he could judge; _he_  started talking to thin air _first_. Those new iPhones were making it really hard to tell whether someone was a slumming yuppie or legitimately crazy.  Still, her Batsenses weren’t tingling so this kid was _probably_  not going to go postal on the bus. Or he was crazy in a Batceptable way. Sometimes it could be hard to tell the difference.

Speaking of phones, Stephanie’s buzzed, and she pulled out her cell out.  She didn’t recognise the number but the message made her blood run cold: _Batgirl, we need to talk._  She’d been _so careful_  to keep her identity secret this time around, and now someone was texting her with her superhero name on her personal phone?  At the very least Batman could pay for her plan.  She sighed, texting her mysterious person back with the flippant ease that came with her generation: _i have nfi what ur talking about_. The reply came back fast: _I’m a Teen Titan. I tried asking for help from Batman, but Robin … is he always like that?_  Steph bit back a laugh, shrugging as she replied: _yeah_.  His one word reply triggered a memory cascade and she looked back up at Jaime Reyes, aka the new Blue Beetle, who apparently had been texting her with his scarab thingy.

“Who says “aces”, anyway?” she wondered aloud.  “I get off next stop, want a ride?  You can tell me what you’ve discovered then.  That _is_  why you’re here, riding Gotham’s finest in broken down buses, right?”

*

As it turned out, what Jaime had discovered was a whole lot of kidnappings and not a lot of ideas as to why anyone would want _a_  teenager not related to them, let alone several. Having brought him up to her room with a breezy “Oh, mom won’t be home for hours yet,” Steph watched in open fascination as a holographic map blossomed from Jaime’s fingertips, marking out locations and identities of each of the abducted teens.

“I got them tracked until they just … _go_ ,” Jaime said with a helpless shrug.  “There’s some kind of magnetic field right about here,” he gestured across part of Gotham, “that makes the scarab get kind of hinky.  And that’s not even going into whether magic’s involved or not.”

Steph pointed her finger towards the left of Jaime’s troublespot. “There’s a secret underground supervillain lair here. Not _that_  secret, ‘cause we all know about it, but I don’t get the whole magnet thing.  I mean, magnets, how do they work?”  Tragically, Jaime’s only response was a pained wince.  “Tough audience,” Steph muttered.  “Point is, we can go out there pretty easy; that’s on a major route.  The thing is --”

“--why are they kidnapping teenagers in the first place,” Jaime sounded as confused as Steph was about why anyone would want to kidnap adolescents.

“Exactly!” Steph beamed.  “Now, you said you’d tracked them all, right?  Can you show me where they were the last week before they got snatched?” Jaime frowned, his eyes vague for a second, before a series of colored lines appeared on the map.  Surprisingly, all of them had at least one visit to the Gotham Central Power Station, the very place Steph had marked off just a minute ago.

“I thought that was weird too,” Jaime said. “Like, Gotham kids might really like power stations?  But in El Paso, that’d be weird. So I wanted to get some backup before I went in … except Robin went on about how only the proles need to show their power off like that. What does that even _mean_?”

Steph bit back a laugh.  It really wasn’t funny.  “Robin … may not know what a power station _is_. It’s a work in progress.” She made a note to suggest to Alfred that, as part of his curriculum, Batman took Robin out on a few field trips to the usual places that any Gotham resident would know, if only so that they could _pretend_  that he was an ordinary kid who occasionally dressed up as Robin as opposed to a pre-teen assassin trying to learn what being a person was like.  It was times like these that Steph really felt terrible that all Damian knew was ‘how to kill people’ and ‘other things his screwed up family thought was important to know to show their superiority’.  “Anyway, the only answer is to go out and look!”

Jaime looked a little concerned.

“Uh … I know you Bat … people have like … stealth tech or something, but isn’t it the middle of the day? What if anyone sees us?”

Steph couldn’t resist a perfect opportunity.

“Well, Bug Boy, there’s a _traditional_  way for Blue and Gold superheroes to get around. Only this time I get to be Blue Beetle and _you_  get to be Booster!” She kept a straight face only through force of effort (and training with Batman) as she watched Jaime’s face change as he realized what she was referring to.  There were any number of photographs of Ted Kord as Blue Beetle straddling Booster Gold while Booster used his flight ring to get around - it was one of the more common reasons cited as to why people thought that Ted and Booster were knocking boots when the superheroic lights were off.

“Nah, just kidding,” she said, snickering. “I just go out in costume. No-one looks up, you know.” Jaime looked somewhat skeptical of the average Gothamite’s ability to ignore just about everything if they tried hard enough, but Steph waved him off.  “It’ll be fine!  Let me show you the town.”

*

Seventeen rooftop swings, way too many scramblings across roofs and one cheerful wave to the _unfortunately_  hot Inspector Davis pinning a perp to a wall (Batgirl was fairly sure that if ever she decided to date a woman, it would be someone who looked a lot like Inspector Rachel Davis - a comment that got Blue Beetle giving her a sidelong look and almost hitting a building), Blue Beetle and Batgirl arrived at the power station.  Like all architecture in Gotham, it was brooding, gothic and had really handy ledges and hiding places for certain teenaged vigilantes to duck behind when snooping around and fearing they would be caught.

“Do you think it’s deliberate?” she asked Blue Beetle, whose abstracted gaze meant that he was either talking to the scarab or trying to remember whether he had left the oven on.  Batgirl really hoped it was the former, though if it was the latter she could at least find out if the scarab could turn off his oven from the other side of the country.  His head jerked up and he blinked at her.

“What?”

“The buildings. Everything is like … _designed_  for vigilantes to hide behind.”  Batgirl grinned.  “I wonder if I could do a class on that. Mom always said that she wants me to do something _productive_  this semester.”

“Uh … okay.”  Clearly Blue Beetle was not up on this bantering thing. Or was saving the best dialogue for his AI friend.   _Totally_  not fair.  “There’s a group of people over there.  Five hundred and forty seven point five six two yards.”  Batgirl looked where Blue Beetle was pointing.  It was definitely a wall.

“Are you sure?  That wall looks pretty wall-like to me.  Also who gives distances to _three decimal places_?”

“What wall?”  It seemed that Blue Beetle wasn’t going to take on the precision of measurement crack; pity, as Batgirl had a whole _vein_  of untapped jokes about them. Instead, she squinted at the wall that was absolutely definitely there.

“You don’t see the wall?”  Blue Beetle shook his head, making a face as he did so.

“Sorry, the scarab just told me. There’s some kind of magic on it?  I guess? Anyway, it’s definitely _not_  a wall.”

“Great!” Batgirl flipped Blue Beetle a devil-may-care smile as she raced through the wall, closing her eyes at the point where she thought she’d hit it. Unfortunately, that meant that she tripped on the other side, falling to her hands and knees and skidding across the floor.  Fortunately, all she got was a nasty jar - her Batgirl outfit was reinforced on the hands and knees for just this type of event. It also meant that when Blue Beetle followed after her, wincing and holding his hand to his head as he passed through the magical illusion, he got to see Batgirl sprawled on the ground like a drunken teenager on Friday night.

“So … where are the people?” she asked, picking herself back up.  “Which way do we go now?”  Instead of answering her question, Blue Beetle looked quite disconcerted, his face twisted in a pained grimace as he squinted.  Then his eyes widened, his finger tips sparked ...and the lights went out.

 _Now aka "Back to A Batfamily Staple: Being Tied Up In A Dark Room"_

“So we just got roofied by a magical creeper.” Batgirl moaned.  “I’m _never_  going to hear the end of this.”  She squinted as Blue Beetle squirmed again.  “I think I have a batarang on me still that’ll work for this.” She made a face.  “Except …”

“Except what?” Blue Beetle sounded apprehensive. He was right to.

“Your girlfriend isn’t going to kill me if I tell you it’s near my ass, right?” Judging by Blue Beetle’s startled splutters, that was _not_  the answer he was expecting. Batgirl wasn’t especially keen on the idea either, but she’d forgotten to move it to an easily accessible pouch before they left - the only reason she even _had_  one was because she and Wendy had been _experimenting_  (though Babs had remarked wryly that normally it took a few more drinks for batarangs to be that hilarious) and now she couldn’t even get to it?  Figures.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Blue Beetle muttered as a mantra as he shuffled around and tried to pick the batarang out of her back pocket with his hands bound as well.  Batgirl’s lips quirked wryly as he groped her accidentally, biting back a comment about how she hadn’t been touched like that since she went out to a nightclub.  He was already nervous enough judging by the anxious twitching as he slowly pulled out the batarang, and she didn’t want to cause him to have a meltdown.  As he pulled it out, he sawed through the ropes tying her wrists behind her without being asked, something that Batgirl noted with pleasure. He may be new to this superhero gig, but he was smart.  He offered her the batarang which she used to make quick work of the magical shocking thing on her feet. It zapped her a few times while she was cutting it off, and she hissed under her breath.

Rubbing at her wrist with her hand, she turned around and went to work untying Blue Beetle. She wondered, for not the first time, why Batman hadn’t set up classes for how to untie yourself as it seemed like a fairly handy skill to have.  She wasn’t even sure how Blue Beetle had managed to get his hands free enough to untie her, all things considered, and she wondered whether he was one of the people blessed with double jointedness. Judging by his pained expression, he probably wasn’t, which begged the question of _what happened_. It was a mystery for the ages.  Batgirl made a note to ask Oracle about it when they got out of there.

“There you are!” she chirped, cutting away the rope.  “You into this kind of thing? Because it’s going to happen a lot.”

“Why would you even _ask_  that,” Blue Beetle complained, covering his face with his now free hands.

“Because I am an irrepressive free spirit. Come on, does your AI know where our missing kids are?”

“Already on it,” Blue Beetle replied, standing up and shaking his wrists out.  “Right through _here_.” He made his point by punching through the wall. Batgirl whistled through her teeth.  He looked sheepish. “It’s another illusion. The scarab just likes it better if we punch it instead. It says it’s more heroic.” Judging by Blue Beetle’s tone, it was something they’d had long discussions about, not all of them civil.  Batgirl thought it was cute, in a disturbing way.  She followed after him, after using her hand to switch on her night lenses on her mask. Bizarrely, Blue Beetle could only be seen in the visible spectrum; when she changed over to heat vision she couldn’t see him at _all_. She supposed that was yet another nifty thing that his friend could do.

Her sulky annoyance at how he got cool gadgets and she didn’t lasted for about a minute, _tops_  before she went back to being highly amused at how they were apparently circumventing what was rapidly shaping up to be a magical labyrinth by Blue Beetle, quite literally, punching his way to the centre.  He didn’t even seem to be all that strained by it, which made it even better, in her eyes.

It took a surprisingly short period of time to reach the centre, where six very dirty, unhappy teenagers looked up at them from the floor, their hands and feet bound in the same way that Batgirl’s had been.

“It’s Batgirl!” one girl exclaimed and Batgirl grinned despite herself.  She was a superhero for its own sake, but it was really, _really_  nice to see sometimes the delighted smiles of people going “It’s Batgirl” as opposed to staring at her in horror and moaning “oh no, it’s _you_ ” or whatever.  

“That’s right. Blue Beetle and I are here to save you.”  The batarang was put to good use as she cut into the ropes. Blue Beetle kept an eye out for any errant magical creepers, shaking his head curtly as Batgirl looked over at him. “Okay, once Big Blue here finds a way out, we’re going to run for it. You’ll be back home before you know it!”

“Back the way we came, then we turn left,” Blue Beetle supplied. Batgirl thought about offering to hug the teenagers, but was turned away by their sullen, moody expressions.  Though, she supposed, if she had been kidnapped and then dumped in a magical room for a week she’d be moody too.  Still, couldn’t they at least smile a _little_?

They made their way through the maze - if, by “making their way through”, it meant “following the wreckage Blue Beetle had left - and turned left. Blue Beetle kicked the door at the end of the corridor and the kidnapped teens blinked into the sunlight of the upper story balcony of the Gotham City Library.  Score one for the obscurities of Gotham town planning!  Batgirl fished out a notebook and pen from one of her pouches, where she quickly scribbled down a message and a number, passing it to Blue Beetle.  He accepted it, his hand going up to his temple as he apparently began dialing.

“Hi, Detective Mc -- okay, no, you did not seriously write this.” Batgirl burst into gales of laughter at his face, which only got worse as he responded to the person on the other end with a very deadpan “Batgirl says hi and asks that you send a team to the library.  Yes, Detective. I can imagine.” The call seemingly terminated, she smiled cheerfully at the look Blue Beetle was giving her.

The police showed up ten minutes later, by which time Batgirl had started practicing folding paperclips into stylised shapes. She was working on a space invaders one when the now infamous Detective “McHottie” Gage tapped her on her shoulder.

“You strike again, Batgirl? We’ve been looking for these kids a week.” Batgirl shrugged.

“Couldn’t have done it without my partner here,” she replied laconically, slinging an arm around Blue Beetle’s shoulders.

Two days later, Steph had given Jaime a call and invited him over to to the trusty Gotham Diner for breakfast. Breezily ignoring any questions as to why they were meeting up on account of explanations being boring, Steph just told him to be there or be square.  She half expected him not to show up, and so she was pleasantly surprised when she saw him walk through the door.

“Oh hey!” Steph waved.  Jaime slouched over to her table, sliding down onto the bench and slumping tiredly. “Guess who’s on the front page?”  She slid over a plate of waffles to Jaime, mentally congratulating herself on being the _best_  at guessing when someone was going to arrive.  The two plates had literally arrived a _minute_  before Jaime had showed up, and while they weren’t as good as the ones her mom made, they weren’t bad for what she paid for them.

“What?”

In answer, Steph fished out her copy of the local paper.  There, on the front page, was a photograph of Batgirl beaming, her arm slung around Blue Beetle’s shoulder.  The photograph was ruined somewhat by Blue Beetle’s stunned look as he stared directly at the camera, his jaw slightly ajar.

“That Blue Beetle kid’ll go far in the superhero gig,” Steph mused, her finger tapping on the photograph. “He just needs to know how to handle himself in front of the cameras.”

“ _Aces_ ,” Jaime moaned. Despite ducking his head, Steph could still see the blush spreading across his face.  “Aw, it’s not too bad.  Just ask Batman one day for lessons.”

“ _What?_  Batman does _what_? I thought you guys were into the whole … hiding in the shadows thing! How is this a -- oh right. It’s _Batman_.”

“Yep. Batman can do everything. Except not leave the toilet seat up. I think all guys do that.”

“Didn’t want to know that.”

During the next conversation about whether Batman did or did not leave the toilet seat up, urging Jaime to eat his waffles and regaling him about the weird oddities that Gothamites took for granted (and only at _most_  twelve percent were made up just to see if Jaime would believe them) Steph snuck glimpses of the photograph. As much fun as it was being a sole terror of the night, she really _did_  like working in a team. Maybe next time she could arrange for Supergirl to come along too, and make a real day of it.

“So, what are you doing next week? We’ve got a magical creeper to catch.  Batman’s got him traced, so all we need to do is punch him in the face.”  Jaime didn’t look as enthused as she thought he should.  “It’ll be fine, promise!”

It wasn’t, of course. But where would a plucky female vigilante be if everything went to plan?


End file.
